368 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



This appeal to religious faith is, however, but one of our means of 

 reaching nervous invalids; it is not always the most promising, nor is 

 it always applicable; but it is the only one which affords any excuse 

 for the entrance of the church into the fields of psychotherapy. 



If, as has been said by one of its stoutest medical defenders, the 

 aim of the Emmanuel Church work is only "to educate the religious 

 faith, and to train the moral capacities of nervous invalids, sent to 

 it by the physicians of the community for that very purpose," there 

 would be much less room for criticism. The work would then be 

 done in the same quiet, unobtrusive way that the medical profession 

 believes that all such work should be done. 



But when it comes to lecturing weekly, to hundreds of laymen and 

 women at the church, and to going about from city to city explaining 

 to lay audiences the nature of the work and encouraging imitation, 

 as is being done by the projectors of this Emmanual idea, the medical 

 profession at large views with alarm the superficial manner in which 

 a complex medical problem is presented, and sees in it strong elements 

 of quackery and charlatanism, and the danger of great harm from 

 its practise. 



Education of the reason and strengthening of the will would seem 

 to be more promising means of securing a nervous equilibrium than 

 an appeal to the emotions. Even though this work has been, and is 

 being done by the general practitioner, as we have already seen, it is 

 probably true that in many cases, at least, it is a work in which he 

 would welcome the assistance and advice of a specialist. But how 

 much better fitted to give that help is the expert in diseases of the brain 

 and nervous system who has studied psychology, than he who has 

 studied psychology alone, or taken it up as a side issue to his study 

 of theology and of church administration. 



On this point there would seem to be little chance for disagreement. 

 The safest counselor in all medical matters is he who has first grounded 

 himself in normal and abnormal anatomy, in normal and pathological 

 physiology and in the theory and practise of medicine as a whole, and 

 then upon this foundation has made a thorough and exhaustive study 

 of his special department; not the man who has followed a post- 

 graduate course of lectures for a few weeks, or even months, nor the 

 man whose psychological study has been incidental to his ecclesiastical 

 training. 



To quote again from the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal: 



The only knowledge which is of value in the field of abnormal psychology 

 and mental therapeutics has been gained from the laborious investigations of 

 psychologists and physicians. This, all are free to use; but that its use is best 

 safeguarded, and likely to be productive of the best results, in the hands of 

 men with a general medical training will not generally be denied. 



